Gretchen Geary displayed some of the records she used to solve a John Doe case of a man who died in 1979. (John Gibbins / Union-Tribune) Medical Examiner's Office investigator Gretchen Geary has the full-time task of identifying the county's anonymous dead. (John Gibbins / Union-Tribune)

Online: In some cases, the county Medical Examiner's Office has identified a deceased John or Jane Doe, but has not found family members. For reports on six such people, go to uniontrib.com/more/documents

It had been 24 torturous years since Orville Schott and his five siblings last knew their father's whereabouts. George Schott had to be somewhere. He just had to be, they knew.

Gretchen Geary, an investigator in the county Medical Examiner's Office, had a file on a man known only as John Doe 85-54 since his death on a downtown San Diego street in 1985. He had to be somebody. He just had to be, she knew.

Geary now has a name to go with the file, and the Schott family has finally learned the fate of their father.

Geary's work to solve that mystery is part of a new push by the Medical Examiner's Office to identify the 425 nameless dead listed on the office's roll as John or Jane Doe.

“I look at these cases and think that everybody deserves a name and every family deserves an answer,” Geary said.

In November, Geary was assigned the full-time task of identifying the county's anonymous dead.

She checks fingerprints and DNA with national databases that contain millions of samples.

She works with sketch artists and facial reconstruction specialists to create and distribute portraits of the dead.

She relies on anthropologists to examine skeletal remains for clues to gender or ethnicity, or abnormalities that might signal old injuries or a limp.

And, in rare cases, she'll have bodies exhumed to recover DNA.

Medical examiner's offices across the country, including Atlanta, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, are doing similar work as a means of identifying the country's estimated 40,000 John and Jane Does.

“We have the technology now to go to work and solve some of these mysteries,” said Dr. Marcella Fierro, head of the National Association of Medical Examiners' identification committee, which aids investigators like Geary.

“For years and years, getting identifications has been a major issue, and we are now seeing the trend across the country of increasing efforts to make identifications.”

Fierro cited the Coroner's Office in Clark County, Nev., as a model for other offices. Coroner Mike Murphy and his investigators in Las Vegas have made identification a priority for four years.

Murphy said there are two primary reasons for the concentrated effort: The work helps solve cases involving homicide victims, and it comforts families of the missing.

“Knowing the identity of a victim means you can re-walk the steps of the victim leading up to their death,” he said.

“Until we know who these people are, we can't close the file with complete certainty that we know everything about the circumstances of their death,” he said.

Wagner said he carved out the full-time duties for Geary because of her tenacity and passion for the job, which is now part of the office's investigations unit.

The task is becoming easier with access to FBI and Homeland Security records, along with Web sites, such as the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, aimed at finding missing persons.

Last year, 111 bodies came to the county Medical Examiner's Office without a name. All but 13 were identified.

Unconventional clues

The job is a mix of science and emotion for Geary.

The science is in the testing of DNA or the matching of dental records. The emotion is in relieving families of the anguish of not knowing.

“I would want to know,” said Geary, mother of an 18-month-old daughter. “I would want to know the answers to why someone I loved was missing. I would want to know when and where they died. I would want to know how they died.”

Geary, 37, is a former police officer who attended San Diego State University. She was hired by the Medical Examiner's Office in 2000. A fan of mysteries and puzzles, she has a drive for solving the unknown.

Her oldest case dates to 1970, when the bodies of newborn twin boys were found along a Spring Valley road. She had the bodies exhumed so DNA samples could be taken, but the samples did not yield enough for matching.

Not all cases are such enigmas. Sometimes it's merely a matter of confirming the obvious.

When an elderly couple was found slain in their Carlsbad home last month, Geary was assigned the case. Even though authorities were certain of their identities, the couple had been so disfigured by their assailant that they were unrecognizable.

Geary spent three days using fingerprints to identify Harry Gluck and six days using dental records to positively identify his wife, Jean.

“We have to be absolutely positive,” she said. “There can be no question – no possibility of a misidentification.”

Using fingerprints and dental records is routine. But Geary has relied on other, less conventional clues to form the foundation for an identification.

She used a few dreadlocks still attached to a skull to help identify a woman who'd been missing from her Lincoln Park home for eight years.

And just recently she used a pair of extra-large cutoff sweat pants that circled the waist of a skeleton found near Escondido.

In that case, a missing person report indicated the man was rather large.

“When I saw the cutoffs I was pretty sure,” Geary said, holding her hands about three feet apart.

A mystery solved

The case involving George Donald Schott began on a dreary morning in January 1985, when his body was discovered in a produce company parking lot. He'd been run over by an 18-wheeler that he was sleeping under for shelter.

He was wearing a shirt and pants stained with oil and grease. He was 5-foot-9 and weighed 134 pounds. He looked to be between 50 and 60 years old. It was obvious to investigators that he was a transient.

But he had no identification and was unknown among the downtown's homeless.

His meager belongings were sent to the Public Administrator's office and John Doe 85-54 was buried in an unmarked grave in Mount Hope Cemetery.

When Geary first renewed the office's efforts to identify the unknowns, John Doe 85-54 was among the files. Geary sent the state Department of Justice a card with the inky swirls and contours of the man's fingerprints, and waited with her usual anticipation.

“You want to get the answers to the questions left unanswered for so long,” she said.

A year and a half later, an e-mail from the department informed her the prints matched those of Schott.

Geary found Orville Schott in Pleasanton with the help of amateur genealogists, and a 24-year-old mystery was solved.

Schott was stunned to hear from Geary. One of George's daughters had seen him a few months before his death, when he was working with a traveling carnival. They didn't know he was on the streets in San Diego.

“We finally knew what happened,” Schott said. “After all these years we had answers to our questions.”

Not only is Orville Schott's family relieved, but his 70-year-old mother can now begin collecting Social Security survivor benefits because they have proof of her husband's death.

The family has ordered a headstone for their father's grave. “The void in our lives has been filled,” Schott said. “We have the answers now.”